College presents many challenges for students, and how students cope with these challenges can affect how well they fare academically and socially. First-generation college students (FGs: students whose parents do not have four-year degrees) face more social, academic, and financial challenges and have higher dropout rates than continuing-generation students (CGs: students with at least one parent with a four-year degree). Research has shown that when facing challenges in college, FGs are unlikely to seek university resources; however, it is not clear what FGs are doing in the face of challenge. This exploratory study uses a social and cultural-psychological lens to begin understanding how FGs respond to challenges in college. We presented 273 undergraduate students (70 FGs) with a series of vignettes describing academic, financial, and social challenges and asked students to predict how they would respond to each challenge. Initial analyses suggest that when faced with financial challenges, FGs were less likely than CGs to “seek resources they would need,” and when faced with academic and social challenges, FGs were more likely than CGs to seek social support, to distract themselves from thinking about the challenge, and to remove themselves from the situation. These findings suggest that FGs may struggle in particular when faced with financial challenges, as they do not seek the resources they need to overcome this type of challenge, perhaps because they do not have access to many financial resources. When facing academic or social challenges, rather than turning to the university, FGs may seek social support outside of the university or disengage from these situations altogether. Given that FGs tend to struggle more in college than CGs do, this research has implications for understanding how to help future FGs deal with challenges in the university.

For a community suffering from collective trauma, unity is vital for building community resilience, which is the capacity to withstand, recover from, and respond positively to a collective crisis. Both the Native American Tulalip community and the predominantly White Marysville community were affected by an October 2014 school shooting in which five students (3 Native American; 2 European American) died. We sought to identify factors that contribute to community resilience. We surveyed 597 employees of the Marysville School District and assessed perceptions of unity prior to and after the shooting, as well as personal experiences following the shooting (i.e., negative and positive feelings). My project focuses on the relation between people’s individual experiences and their perceptions of community unity following the shooting. I conducted a series of regression analyses predicting unity from personal experiences and found that people who had more positive feelings following the shooting perceived the communities as more united, while people who had more negative feelings perceived the community as less united. Furthermore, these relationships were magnified among people who knew at least one victim of the shooting compared to those who did not know victims. These findings suggest that in cases of collective trauma, projections of negative feelings following the event have the potential to hinder efforts to rebuild the community, whereas positive feelings may serve to aid this effort, especially among people who are closely tied to the traumatic event. These results highlight the importance of understanding how to foster positive feelings in the promotion of post-trauma healing. Given the frequency of mass violence in contemporary society, it is increasingly important to examine not only preventative measures but also understand how to promote healing for those affected by these tragedies. This work seeks to begin answering this question.

After large loading events, such as earthquakes, buildings are inspected to determine the extent of damage done to the structural systems and whether it is still safe to use. These building inspections are completed mostly by observing visible damage and using engineering judgment to determine the residual strength of structural elements, or members. This approach is subjective, and accurate inspections demand a more robust approach. Non-destructive testing can be performed on structural steel that attempts to quantify a member’s strength, but these tests have marginal accuracy. Permanent instrumentation of a building can also provide data, but sensors must be powered and well maintained. An interdisciplinary team, led by Professors Dawn Lehman and Laura Lowes from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Professor AJ Boydston from the Department of Chemistry seeks to develop a polymer coating that can provide a better way to quantify strain in building members. The polymer is comprised of strain-sensitive units (mechanophores) that undergo molecular-level transformations as the polymer chains are extended. The chemical reactions provide visible outputs, such as intense changes in color and fluorescence properties. By changing the microstructure of the polymer and mechanophores, we will be able to control the threshold sensitivity and strain-dependent intensity of color changes. Once applied to a member, the polymer would effectively track the strain that the material undergoes through a change in color, which can be correlated to a residual strength. This color can be observed after earthquakes and other extreme events and allow inspectors to quickly and accurately determine structural health. Our research objectives include applying color-changing strain-responsive (mechanochromic) polymer coatings to building members and analyzing the response to applied strain. My contribution to the project is creating the metal samples and testing them after the polymer has been applied.

Marine ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) are abundant marine microorganisms that compose their cell membranes with glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs). These lipids are useful biomarkers for developing a record of sea surface temperature. Through the TEX86 temperature proxy, GDGTs have been able to provide insight into historic patterns of sea surface temperature through the relationship between annual average sea surface temperature and the composition of GDGTs. Existing data suggest that in addition to temperature, other environmental factors might influence TEX86. We postulate that varying light, salinity and peroxide concentrations would have an effect on the GDGT composition of AOA in culture. We conducted experiments with varying light, salinity and peroxide levels to test their effect on TEX86 on strains of AOA. We observed that light levels influenced the GDGT composition. The calculated TEX86 values were higher when the cells were exposed to light. Salinity concentrations above and below the optimal salinity of 25 resulted in lower calculated TEX86 (below 17°C). Peroxide levels did not affect calculated TEX86 temperatures, which suggest the presence of different adaptations that allow for archaea to acclimate to relatively extreme conditions. Our work demonstrates that different environmental stressors have an effect on lipid composition.

Depressive disorders are a significant public health concern, affecting 11.4% of youth, and are associated with a loss of interest in activities and anxiety, psychosocial problems such as academic difficulties, and psychosocial impairment in adulthood including increased risk for substance abuse and suicide. By providing adequate mental health treatment, adverse effects of depressive disorders in youth and adolescence may be mitigated. Although mental health services for youth are currently inaccessible for 70% of the youth population who would benefit from these services, healthcare is experiencing a trend towards increased access to mental health services both through the Affordable Care Act and the expansion of Medicaid. My study’s goal is to look at ways to provide these quality mental health services to youth. In order to provide quality health mental health care for youth with depressive disorder, a collaborative care model may be used. Collaborative care uses a multidisciplinary team of primary care providers, mental health specialists, and community support to deliver a multifaceted approach to patients with mental health issues through cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), pharmacotherapy, or both delivered by primary care providers in community health settings. To date, 3 RCTs have evaluated the effectiveness of collaborative care against usual care for youth depression. One mainstay treatment for youth depression has been CBT. While collaborative care is an emerging model of treatment for youth depression, it has not been compared to stand-alone CBT. In this investigation, benchmarking is used to find an applied effectiveness for both collaborative care and cognitive behavioral therapy. I searched through peer-reviewed journals using search engines such as Medline and PsychInfo to gather published studies. Using these results and data, I then used statistical analyses and benchmarking to compare the effectiveness of both CBT and collaborative care.